Articles Tagged With: FHA Loan Rules

May 5, 2022

FHA Home Loan Planning For First-Time Home Buyers

If you’re considering an FHA home loan to purchase your first home, there are some issues you might not think about right away when planning and saving for your loan. Anticipating some of these issues can help you make smarter choices about your home, the home loan, and the features of the mortgage. Think Like A Lender That is advice commonly reserved for the credit check, and it’s good advice. Learning to think like a loan officer can help you better determine whether you are truly ready to apply for the loan. For this article, “think like a lender” also extends to things like the type of home you want to buy. What does this mean? When a home is appraised, your lender’s review of the appraisal report will include | more...

May 3, 2022

FHA Loan Income And Employment Rules You Need To Know

By Joe Wallace

Here’s a variation on a common question about FHA loan approval. “I recently switched employment types from salary to commission. How long do I have to earn on a commission basis to qualify for a mortgage?” If you have recently changed the way you earn, that change may complicate your FHA loan process depending on how recently the change happened and other variables. Switching to commission from salary is one of the best-known examples, but some borrowers may have changed from being full-time, in-house employees, to being contractors or consultants. In other cases, an FHA loan applicant may have quit working for someone else to be their own boss as a small business owner. In all cases, the lender requires proof of employment and income in the form of W2s | more...

May 2, 2022

The FHA Energy Efficient Mortgage Program

By Joe Wallace

In April 2022, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced support for a Washington D.C. program called “Solar For All”, a program HUD says will help, “ensure that residents of HUD-assisted properties in the District are able to access the program without experiencing an increase in their housing costs.” According to a press release on the HUD official site, the “Solar for All” project is intended to bring solar energy to 100 thousand low-to-moderate-income families in the D.C. area. This announcement is part of a Biden administration push to “address climate concerns, and create benefits for residents of HUD-assisted households through equitable deployment of community solar” according to HUD. But did you know that you don’t have to live in Washington D.C. to consider a solar upgrade with an | more...

April 29, 2022

True Or False? FHA Home Loan Issues You Should Know

By Joe Wallace

How much do you really know about the home loan process? If you are interested in buying a home with a low-down-payment FHA mortgage, there are a few things that are good to know before you start house hunting. True Or False? FHA Home Loans Are For First-Time Homebuyers Only False. It’s one of the most common persistent myths about FHA mortgages. True Or False? You Don’t Need A Down Payment With An FHA Home Loan False, but the down payment requirement for FHA mortgages is lower than some conventional equivalents. While it’s true that there are conventional mortgages that offer down payments in the three percent range similar to FHA home loans, you may find the FICO score requirements for these loans to be higher than the FHA minimum | more...

April 28, 2022

Preparing For An FHA Mortgage Loan

By Bruce Reichstein

Applying for an FHA home loan doesn’t happen overnight–it takes time to plan, budget, examine your credit, and save money for the fees and expenses associated with an FHA mortgage. If you’re new to the home buying process and don’t know where to start, a very good way to begin to get an idea of how much home you can afford with your present income, debts, and financial obligations. Do you want to know how much you can borrow, and how much your payments might be? You can use an online mortgage loan calculator to estimate these amounts. Remember that the amount of the loan you might qualify for and the amount of mortgage payment you can actually afford may be two different things altogether, which is why many web-based | more...

April 27, 2022

The End Of April Is The End Of Fair Housing Month 2022

By Joe Wallace

Saturday, April 30, 2022, is the last day of Fair Housing Month. But the advent of May doesn’t mean that the fight against housing discrimination comes to an end. The Department of Housing and Urban Development encourages all who may have experienced some form of discrimination in the housing process to come forward and report the incidents to the HUD Office of Housing and Equal Opportunity or FHEO. FHEO is responsible for enforcing the Fair Housing Act, but also the following laws that contribute to fair housing for all: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Section 109 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 The | more...

April 25, 2022

Before You Fill Out An FHA Home Loan Application

By Bruce Reichstein

How can a new borrower prepare for a home loan application? There are some important steps to take and not all of them are as obvious as others. For example, do you know where your down payment money will come from? If you are still trying to figure out how to budget and save for it, you might consider investigating local down payment assistance programs in your area. But there are other things to do before you turn in a home loan application. Check Your Credit Use That’s a no-brainer, right? But there are issues you should consider when examining your credit that may not be so obvious. For example, some first-time homebuyers don’t realize that it’s not just your credit scores, but also your credit utilization that gets scrutinized | more...

April 22, 2022

Employment And Income Verification For FHA Loans

By Joe Wallace

Here is a common variation on an FHA loan question we get frequently. “I have been employed for about two years, do I qualify for an FHA mortgage?” FHA loans require a variety of financial qualifications including FICO scores, your history of payments on financial obligations, your debt-to-income ratio, and other factors. Lender standards and FHA loan rules both apply, as do some state laws and other regulations. There’s no individual factor that determines a borrower’s ability to qualify for an FHA mortgage, a number of variables come into play as mentioned above. Sometimes one or more factors can disqualify a borrower, it’s true-a low FICO score, debt ratios that are too high, missed payments in the last 12 months leading up to the loan application, or major changes in | more...

April 21, 2022

HUD Announces Fair Housing Conciliation Agreement With Bank Of America

By Joe Wallace

Housing discrimination comes in many forms. The Fair Housing Act makes it a crime to discriminate against people at any stage in the housing process. You cannot be denied a loan, services, or assistance due to your race, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other non-financial factor listed in the Fair Housing Act. Yet, discrimination persists, even among major corporate lenders and other industry players. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced a Conciliation Agreement with Bank of America, N.A., “to resolve allegations of familial status and sex discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.” Bank of America, and one of its loan officers, “allegedly refused” to approve a home loan for a couple, “until after one of the applicants returned to work from maternity leave.” | more...

April 20, 2022

Buying Your First Home: What To Remember

By Joe Wallace

There is a little checklist of things not to do when buying a home. The top of the list? Not shopping around for a lender. FHA home loans have multiple options including the type of loan (fixed-rate, adjustable-rate mortgage) and the loan term (15 years or 30 years). But there are also multiple options based on the property you want to buy; a suburban home, a townhouse, condo unit, or even a multi-unit home. That variety of options brings with it a need to know more specifics about the type of loan you seek, and there are definitely things NOT to do when you are considering these options. And not all the considerations are directly related to applying for and getting approved for an FHA mortgage. Some have a lot | more...